STARWEST 2021 - Test Automation
Monday, October 4
Test Automation: Start and Succeed
Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems as their product matures and changes over time. As a leader, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing added value? Chris Loder explains the critical issues you need to know to get a good start, and he will share his extensive experience in building great automation. He covers the most important management issues you should address for test automation success,...
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Skills for the Testing World
Software continues to revolutionize the world, impacting nearly every aspect of our work, family, and personal life. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are playing key roles in this revolution through improvements in search results, recommendations, forecasts, and other predictions. AI and ML technologies are being used in platforms for digital assistants, home entertainment, medical diagnosis, customer support, and autonomous vehicles. Testing practitioners are recognizing the potential for advances in AI and ML to be leveraged for automated testing—an area that still...
Test Design for Fully Automated Build Architecture
Imagine this … as soon as any developed functionality is submitted into the code repository, it is automatically subjected to the appropriate battery of tests and then released straight into production. Setting up the pipeline capable of doing just that is becoming more and more common and something you need to know about. But most organizations hit the same stumbling block—just what IS the appropriate battery of tests? Automated build architectures don't always lend themselves well to the traditional stages of testing. In this hands-on tutorial, Melissa Benua introduces you to key test...
Instill a DevOps Testing Culture in Your Team and Organization
The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really...
Tuesday, October 5
Testing Strategies for Microservices
Software development is trending toward building systems using small, autonomous, independently deployable services called microservices. Leveraging microservices makes it easier to add and modify system behavior with minimal or no service interruption. Because they facilitate releasing software early, frequently, and continuously, microservices are especially popular in DevOps. But how do microservices affect software testing and testability? Are there new testing challenges that arise from this paradigm? Or are these simply old challenges disguised as new ones? Join Tariq King as he...
Web Security Testing: The Basics and More
Web applications are often security critical or serve as front-ends for security critical applications, making web testing for vulnerabilities an essential part of software testing. Unfortunately, most software testers have not been taught how to identify web security issues while testing applications. Join Richard Mills as he shares what you need to know to security test web-based applications as part of your overall testing process. Learn about the most common web security vulnerabilities and how they are introduced into web code and exploited by hackers. Explore test techniques for...
Docker 101
NewDocker is the most popular containerized solution being used in the software industry for development. Test automation is no exception to this. Like any other test automation tool, implementation and testing can get complicated, tricky, and unmaintainable if all you understand is the “Record and Playback” features of Docker or think it is the same as using a virtual machine. Do you want to better test Docker-based applications and use Docker for your automation needs? Then join Aprajita Mathur to understand fundamental concepts of Dockers like images, containers, volumes, most used Docker...
Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps
In many organizations, agile development processes are driving the pursuit of faster software releases, which has spawned a set of new practices—DevOps. DevOps stresses communications and integration between development and operations, including rapid deployment, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. Because DevOps practices require confidence that changes made to the code base will function as expected, automated testing is essential. Join Jeffery Payne as he discusses the unique challenges associated with integrating automated testing into continuous integration/continuous...
Wednesday, October 6
AI-Driven Test Automation: A Tour De Force
The use of AI for testing is one of the latest trends in the software industry. Within the last decade, there has been a vast increase in the number of vendors and startup companies promoting AI-driven test automation tools, platforms or frameworks. But what are the real benefits of this technology? Does it have any weaknesses? Are all AI technologies created equally? Join Tariq King as takes you on a journey and shows you the true strength of AI in testing. In this tour de force, Tariq will describe some of the recent advances in AI-driven test automation, while keeping it down to earth...
Does Low Code Mean Low Testing?
Low Code and No Code are new on the block. There are very much low code and no code platforms and the number of organization that use low code or no code is growing. And does low code or no code mean we don't have to test or have to test less on these systems? We will go deep into this question in this talk and explore the risks of low code and no code systems. This presentation will start with a short introduction in low code. We will explain what they are, how they work and will tell that the vendors promise us and that reality is. In the second part we will dive deep into the question...
Thursday, October 7
Don’t Be Scared of AI! It’s Here to Stay and So are You
AI is here to stay and we know it’s going to change our world. There is so much information about AI that it's hard to know where to start, what to learn, what to ignore, and what to believe. How do we tester’s cope up with this new technology and will this technology bring an end to our field of work? Join Aprajita Mathur as she shares the basics of AI and where this technology stands today, what problems are being solved by it and why AI is not just about “ Test Bots” or “Robotics”. She will discuss how testers add/can add value in AI, what testing skills are transferable when working...
Say Goodbye to Test Flakiness and Welcome AI into Open Source Mobile Testing
Mobile automation testing, especially if open source (i.e best of breed – Appium), can be frustrating at times, as it comes with quite a few common challenges: complex environments & setup processes, constantly maintaining locator strategies, struggling with team collaboration, tiresome iOS dependencies, trying to avoid fragility and flakiness within your tests, lack of visibility into test results, and so much more... In this talk we’ll deep dive into each of these obstacles and discuss how Agile methods & advanced tools that will leverage your open source mobile testing with the...
Bots Testing Bots: From Manual to Automated Testing for Conversational AI
Testing is a crucial enabler for the success of chatbots and voice assistants. Doing it manually requires enormous time and effort. As DevOps and furthermore AIOps grow in importance, automated testing will remain critical to ensure that bots actually do what their designers intend. Unlike traditional software where the application follows a predefined flow, a chatbot runs without any restrictions. Talking to a chatbot has no barriers. Combining this with an unpredictable user behavior, it becomes utmost difficult to verify the correctness of conversational AI. Training data and test sets...